Tweetizen Trump – 2017-01-25 "Send the Marines!"

I didn't pass on any of your missives accumulated by yesterday morning, Donald, because — well, honestly, they were kind of dull. "Meeting with top executives!" Stuff like that. Hardly worth a post.

But today …

===

► A photo delivered yesterday that will be displayed in the upper/lower press hall. Thank you Abbas! [1]

Hey, look — you got a photo sent you by someone who seems to have gotten an angle of the swearing-in ceremony that doesn't show a half-empty Mall.

I remain amused that you're so sensitive to the whole thing that not only are you still tweeting about it, but now you're going to put a photo in the press hall to prove that you drew a big crowd. Which nobody is disputing, just that it wasn't as big a crowd as some, which appears to be what is sticking in your craw.

(Are you going to keep a copy on your night stand, too?)

► Congratulations to @FoxNews for being number one in inauguration ratings. They were many times higher than FAKE NEWS @CNN – public is smart! [2]

Yup. Insecurity.

===

► If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds! [3]

Really? What "Feds" are you going to send in? The Army? The Marines? The FBI? The IRS?

None of this is to take away from the violence in some areas of Chicago (though the Chicago PD seem to disagee with your numbers[7]), but your assertion that it's just a matter of "fixing" the problem, and that all that's necessary is to "send in the Feds" strikes me as either wildly naive, or remarkably dangerous.

You know, talking about sending military forces (which is how most people would interpret "send in the Feds") to places within the United States for something short of a major disaster or insurrection is … not normal. I suppose one could point to the Civil Rights era (with irony) and the use of US troops to enforce federal desegregation laws, etc., but those applications were extremely limited, and only came to enforce a particular federal law that the state actively refused to enforce.

Where, I wonder, are all those defenders of states rights and the overreach of the federal government now when you make threats like this? Where are the folk on the Right who were convinced that planned military maneuvers (not even deployments) were Obama plots to declare martial law?

And what other reasons will you find to send in the Marines? Will it be for PR, or for some more sinister purpose? Have you heard of the Posse Comitatus Act? Are the Evil Genius Conspiracy Theorists actually correct?

Again, this is not normal.

For what it's worth, Donald, the Mayor of Chicago seems happy to get federal help — in cracking down on gun law violations.[7] Is that the kind of help you're offering?

===

► Big day planned on NATIONAL SECURITY tomorrow. Among many other things, we will build the wall! [4]

Really? Yeah, can't wait to see how that plays out.

===

► I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and….even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures! [5]

This is really not anything new, Donald — you probably realize that. Voter registration processes in this country are not nearly as clean as anyone would like. That doesn't mean folk are actually voting (in any significant numbers) in multiple elections, illegally, just that they are registered and didn't "unregister" when they moved (or died).

But I also realize that you are insistent on attributing your nearly 3 million vote loss of the popular vote last November to massive "voter fraud" — so you need to find evidence of that happening.

More likely, though, I see this as a way to provide federal support of state voting restrictions, targeting poor and minority voters. It doesn't seem likely that you can put much in the way of federal teeth into that — voting laws are (for better or worse) largely delegated to the states. But you can certainly drop all those annoying federal law suits from the Justice Dept. against states that put in stringent Voter ID and other restrictive laws, ostensibly to solve a voter fraud problem that doesn't exist.

===

► I will be making my Supreme Court pick on Thursday of next week.Thank you! [6]

Great. So now we have that hanging over our head for a week.

(If I were a betting man, I'd have money on Rudy Giuliani. Because why not sustain the zaniness?)

===

Your kindly surrogates also tweeted about your important automobile industry meetings and about signing orders to move forward with Keystone XL and DAPL. We know it was the surrogates (Dan Scavino in particular), since the are also posted on the @POTUS account without your initials. Also, they have good spelling, grammar, and PR-worthy photos.

Not tweeted about: Israeli expansion of West Bank settlements; Twitter revolts at the Dept of the Interior[8]; scrubbing of climate change web pages and freeze of all funding over at the EPA.

Just another day in Paradise.

—-

[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/823937936056008704
[2] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/824078417213747200
[3] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/824080766288228352
[4] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/824083821889015809
[5] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/824227824903090176, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/824228768227217408
[6] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/824229586091307008
[7] http://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-threatens-send-feds-chicago-carnage/story?id=45025761
[8] http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/badlands-national-park-climate-change-tweets-deleted/story?id=45024817

View on Google+